TO: Chief Justice Ronald M. George, Members of the Judicial Council

FROM: Charlene Hammitt, Manager, Jane Evans, Senior Business Systems Analyst

DATE: November 27, 2001

SUBJECT/ PURPOSE OF MEMO: Proposed Rules on Electronic Access to Court Records

CONTACT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

NAME: Jane Evans

TEL: 415-865-7414

FAX: 415-865-7497

EMAIL: jane.evans@jud.ca.gov

QUESTION PRESENTED

What is the electronic access environment in California courts?

What electronic access is offered by California courts?
Currently, of the California trial courts providing electronic access to court information, most offer only calendar and docket information on the Internet, searchable by entering the case name or case number (see Electronic Access in the Trial Courts, first attachment). Accessing and searching calendar and docket information is not standardized statewide, but requires a different approach in each county (see Electronic Access to Trial Court Case Management Information, screen views, second attachment). Case types and years covered also vary from court to court.

A few courts are providing images of the actual documents filed by the parties and the court, but only for very limited case types or consolidated complex litigation.
Alameda County Superior Court, on its web site, has recently begun providing images of documents filed in all civil cases, both limited and general.
Riverside County Superior Court provides access to imaged case files, but only at the courthouse.
San Francisco Superior Court provides Internet access to orders filed in its complex asbestos litigation, but provides for public access only on public terminals at the courthouse to documents that have been electronically filed in that litigation.
Los Angeles County Superior Court provides web access to complaints, answers, and orders in the coordinated diet drug cases.
San Diego County Superior Court is providing web access to calendar, orders, and minutes in coordinated breast implant, latex glove, tobacco, and firearm cases.

California courts have had little experience with providing remote access to court records and with evaluating how providing such access might impact litigants and third parties. This limited access to electronic case materials currently offered by a handful of courts would comply with the proposed rules.

Do California courts have the ability to provide remote electronic access?
Most courts are currently not equipped to provide more than basic case information on the Internet, even if they wanted to. Sixteen courts have a local version of a static web site developed by the Information Services Division of the AOC, offering directory-type information only, with no link to case information. Case management system (CMS) vendors offering products to California courts have had difficulty developing web-based CMS's, and CMS's currently in use in California courts are unlikely to have the ability to segregate or redact confidential information from a specific case file. An incremental approach to remote access allows the Judicial Council to develop programs that support the objective of maximum availability of records by remote access, initially by addressing basic needs of all the courts and then by prioritizing their secondary needs.

What is being done to improve courts' ability to provide electronic access?
Because most courts do not currently have the technological capability to provide electronic access to case information, and because most case files are available in paper only, the Court Technology Advisory Committee is overseeing several statewide initiatives by the AOC Information Services Division to upgrade court information systems so that courts can offer electronic access to case information in the future. The Telecommunications Architecture initiative is evaluating the current physical infrastructure (cabling, equipment rooms, physical connectivity) and networking capability in the trial courts while developing standards for cabling, network performance, and bandwidth to enable the courts to improve information flows. The Service Bureau initiative is working with a vendor to develop a centrally-supported, up-to-date CMS for small courts. The CMS Certification initiative is working to insure that case management systems, either vendor or local, meet California-specific needs.

In addition, the courts have identified imaging as a technology priority for the 2002-2003 budget. Imaging technology would allow courts to convert paper case files to electronic documents that could be remotely accessed. The Finance Division, in developing budget requests for 2002-2003, received requests from several trial courts for records management projects that included imaging, so that these courts would be able to create an electronic database of their paper documents.

Finally, Information Services is supporting electronic filing in two initiatives, so that courts would have original documents in an electronic medium and would not have expend resources to convert them to an electronic medium using imaging technology. The first initiative is grant funding for e-filing projects and the second is development of the California Electronic Filing Technical Standards, working with Legal XML, a national organization engaged in the definition of electronic filing standards based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). Filing standards would integrate with a variety of case management systems, and would for example allow court case management systems to segregate sensitive personal information data elements to render them unreadable by the public on a remote system.

Given time, adequate resources, and technological innovation, courts in California will be able to move toward a more electronic environment and thus provide increased electronic access to information.